Automation In Watchmaking

Should You Ever Engrave A Rolex? The Watch Snob Weighs In

Franck Muller Watches

A friend of mine really likes this watch. I've been reading your stuff for a few years now, and I don't think I've ever heard of this watch maker. Plus 14k seems like a lot for this watch to me. (Reader links to an image of a Franck Muller Conquistador).

Ah, Franck Muller, whose name is seldom uttered in the English speaking watch world. This Franck Muller Conquistador should tell you why. His work is easy to mock: garish, technically uninteresting, absurdly overpriced (although, to be fair, the rest of the watch industry is not exactly obsessed with maximizing value to the consumer either) and completely uninteresting. His watches are like a bad big-budget action film: loud, exhausting to look at, and somehow utterly banal at the same time.

Franck Muller nowadays has very little to do with the company that bears his name; it’s part of a larger group (the Franck Muller Group). The sad bit is that at one time he was an extremely talented young watchmaker, but he fell victim to the age-old trap of believing too much in his own hype, and wanting to make as much money as possible at the expense of just about everything and anything else. The bloated travesties of watchmaking that bear his name today are the result.

Engraving A Rolex

Your work is enjoyable, and I admire your honesty. I am hoping you can give me some advice.

I plan on giving one of my watches (Rolex 14270) to my wonderful wife. I have tried to buy her a watch of her choice, but she could not care less about watches. She has however, become fond of wearing this one.

This woman has stuck by my side through the many ups and downs of life, and I'm so grateful to have her and our two boys in my life. Giving her one of my watches is the least I can do. But maybe I can express my gratitude with an engraving.I'm assuming you have seen a few in your time, and I'm hoping you could give me a little guidance.

Can you share any do's, and do nots of watch engraving? Can you share any do's, and do nots of watch engraving? I.e. Quotes, Dates, Poems? Does humor work? Is there a certain calligraphy you recommend? Any memorable examples you can share? I could really use a little help. As mentioned it is the least I could do for her, but I want to do it right.

Engraving is a way of making an impersonal object more personal. As such, there really are no rules – like anything made especially for a single person, the acid test is whether or not the recipient is pleased. Of course, there are always larger issues of good and bad taste to address – one uses a font like Comic Sans for an engraved dedication at one’s own risk – but by and large, it’s a matter of doing whatever you think will be most pleasing, and you are in a better position to know what that is than anyone else.

As to what to engrave, I would only suggest that you keep things as simple as possible, consistent with you and your wife’s tastes and preferences. Poetry would be more challenging to do well as you have to go rather small to fit in even an haiku, and bear in mind that shallow, relatively light engraving will show wear sooner than larger, simple, deeper engravings. Humor can work but presents the same challenges as poetry in terms of space. On pocket watches, you have a bit more scope for this sort of thing but on a wristwatch, simpler fonts and pithy brevity are the way to go, in my view.

Automation Is Everywhere

In my opinion the robotic production of mechanical watches destroys the anachronistic charm that makes them appealing in the first place. As such, I don’t have anything from Rolex, Panerai, et al. That isn’t to say a Rolex isn’t a high quality product, it’s just that I don’t want people to think I’m a real estate agent. While I greatly admire the Phillippe Dufour approach, they are too expensive for my extremely limited budget. Can you comment on the automation in the industry and highlight the companies who most egregiously rely on robots? Besides Lange, who is still making watches the traditional way on a large scale? While the Dufour is not realistic for me, I’m strongly leaning towards the Gronefeld 1941 Remontoire for my next watch. What do you think about Gronefeld and their constant force escapement movement? Finally, I’d appreciate it if you’d answer a few thousand more questions about Omega Speedmasters and Grand Siekos.

I can’t answer your every question (you have about six going on there) so I will answer the one likeliest to be relevant to other readers: on using robots. I have some shocking news for you, my friend: everyone uses robots, including Roger Smith. They would be stupid not to. For making basic components, a CNC machine gives you everything that is dearest to a watchmaker’s heart: repeatability, high precision, reliability. No one in their right mind would cut out plates and bridges the old fashioned way (for instance) - certainly not for series produced watches. What makes the difference once the basic components are produced, is the degree of hand work that goes into assembling, adjusting, and finishing the watches.

Where matters get sticky is in trying to figure out just how much of what is supposed to be value added human craft is actually being produced with automation. This is very, very difficult to know for certain, however almost every traditional aspect of hand-finishing can, these days, be done by automated or semi-automated means. Your best guide is still your own eye, of course, but it takes a lot of experience and a lot of practice. Lange is not so much making watches the traditional way as they are adding a lot of value in hand-finishing and adjustment, but I assure you, they are happily using CAD for movement design, and highly automated means for producing components (CNC and wire erosion machines, guided by sophisticated computers).

And that is just fine by me. Painstakingly cutting out plates and bridges by hand, turning pivots on a lathe, and cutting teeth manually, one tooth at a time, would be an absurd waste of time, and offer nothing to the consumer. You’d get poorer mechanical reliability and to make it pay, the cost to the consumer would be astronomical. I have every expectation when paying for a watch from the likes of A. Lange & Sohne that there will be hand-work in it, and lots of it; I also have every expectation that it will be done where it’s meaningful, not where it would actually detract from the watch.